CHEERS!

This article appears in the current Adelaide Review.


Went for a walk one morning. Just after Xmas and New Year and the world was still kind of giddy and hungover and not quite back into gear. Where I live is a bit like the Adelaide hills, only further out from the city and covered in fern trees and gums. Hills. The east side hills of Melbourne. A walk is as good as a run and you go up and down the vale. The road twisted to a dirt track and a fellow was ahead of me, struggling with a box. he kept stopping to rest and I eventually caught up with him. Ahead of us was a bluestone set of steps and then two quite sheer streets that take a lot out of the fittest person. he had stopped to rip open the carton and down a beer. it was 9:30 on a Sunday morning. I am always gladdened by the sight of people misbehaving and offered to help him with his burden up the next few levels. He said he was ok but he was puffing and I picked up the box. We walked on and he was embarassedly saying that the next few streets were just that bit too steep at the moment. I agreed. I offered some advice to him in that he could have bought cans and probably got 30 to a case and they’d still have been lighter. He said he liked Crown Ales.
He had standards. he said he’d started drinking at 6 am that morning. His wife was not around to tell him to stop and the beer was sitting there in the sky. the way he said it sounded logical.
I helped him to his gate and we parted ways.
I’m not a drinker myself, though I once was. I got out of the habit when I moved to this area. It involved so much more driving that I just stopped. I also noticed I dropped about 8 kilos immediately and that was s a plus too. Also, being a musician, you find after a while that its great to FEEL the EXCITEMENT and the fear when you’re performing. To know and to be aware .To have the PRESENCE.
I know a lot of drinkers and I see a lot of drinkers. Like that fellow on the street they can be cute and funny for a short time. Prolonged periods spent in their company can get a but tedious. Repetition etc. Maudlin mood swings. Jolly drunks are cool. When I drank I stayed up. I was talkative and came from a family of heroic drinkers. And that family came from a town which was in a country where boozing was a national sport. People used to carry BATHTUBS full of cans and bottles into Adelaide oval to watch the cricket.I’ve seen film of that crazy mob doing that and it filled me with pride that I once lived in such a free and easy country. Now its all law and order and the booze and food concessions are sold to private companies who sell light beer and pale foodstuffs to well behaved crowds and the sponsors are happy etc. The crowd is bought and sold and fed and watered. Football and cricket the same. I know the cry is that its more of a family friendly thing but I despair of living in a world fit only for goddam kids. Hey let ‘em look through the window at the adult hell inside the bar. They can look forward to it with FEAR or EXCITEMENT. At the moment though, its not for them.
On the other side of life in the hills- the night time.-just before Xmas a wild looking character had his picture in the paper for allegedly attacking a copper with a knife. In a suburb even further out. His picture made him look like a zombie, worse than Saddams when he came out of the hole in the ground in Iraq. People thought it funny and pasted the picture as their avatar on social networks as the image of their post Xmas/new Year feel. He was still at large though. The papers said he was in the forests of the hills “travelling up to 30 k’s a night”. For about a week a helicopter kept flying around in the early hours. Someone in a house further into the hills, someone who was staying there for a few weeks, had heard a noise outside and called the police. (Its so quiet up hear you get woken by birds and a car driving past is thunderous). Dutifully, the helicopter was sent out at 2am. People reported that they had fewer eggs so he must be nearby. Up went the chopper again. The folk devil was eventually caught in an inner city suburb and charges have yet to be laid. Back on your heads everyone!
Cheers.

New cd- "rock'n'oll is where I hide - due April on LIBERATION.


New book- "1001 Australian nights" - due April on Affirm Press.

death by harmonica

THIS APPEARS IN THE LATEST EDITION OF AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN MAGAZINE.

Death by Harmonica.
I was doin'’ a gig deep in the hills. A modern day gig which means it was pretty primitive. I mean not much thought went into the situation. Nowadays, people have watched so much music on tv and youtube that they think it just “happens”. There is not a lot of empathy with the players in most areas music. I mean look at the critiques. its all about the business (and don’t they know it all) or about the medias perception or recognition of something. They don’t know shit. The public like to think they know whats goin on too. Have you ever wondered why everybody thinks they’re cool now? Its because they know the tempo. Because most of the music allowed in public is OLD. Because people HATE new stuff. The clubs are definitely on that beat. They treat the players like bums. You have to go into these joints like a commando.
Anyway. This little joint was a resonant , hard surfaced cube. Even talking in the room was hard. Three people talking made a real racket. The reverberant sound blew it all up into a major squall. Made it sound busy and exciting I guess. I could deal with that.
(I must say, there's a whole new business out there to be made in dealing with sound in places like gyms. People don't understand it at all. They only know volume).
Had to take my own sound in etc. I could do that. I was by myself with a great amp with a twelve string guitar and a mic pumping through it. Times like that, you dig in and open fire. I pumped out two sets of about an hour each of my own songs. I was a machine.
After the second set I was packing up and a fellow approached me with a beer in his hand, aussie young man style. He asked did I want to have a “jam” with his friend. Turned out his friend played the harmonica. He was “real good” I was told. I’d had to get into a certain mode of defiant hardness to do the gig and was still coasting on that plane. I said, “ I bet he’s real good, I bet he tells you too!”. The kid nodded. I asked if he played anything. He said he mucked around on the guitar. I was feeling like I could give a fuck so I told him. “Cos thats a real instrument. A harmonica is like a sad bike thats left outside a supermarket that everybody gets on and goes for a ride!” He still didn’t seem to get my evil drift and I went on ( and on) that an instrument like a guitar or a set of drums or a sax or a piano is something you never really get to the end of and is also really hard to get a note out of at the beginning. You have to dive into it and get humiliated at first and that feeling of humility never really leaves you when you get down to it.
I was feeling a bit silly and felt I was owed something and that he wasn’t really going to respond so I turned it up a notch . I said “ I see your mate over there. He looks real confident and I bet he is. Harp players are like that because anybody can get a note out of those damn things. They march into your dressing room and light up a fag like they’re a brother and everybodys into getting fucked up and they’re too loud and they never fucking stop. They slobber all over every part of every goddam song if you let them! I have just played for two hours, songs I have written over a couple of decades. From my mind and my life and you are asking me to stand here and comp a twelve bar while this dribbler in high waisted stretch acid washed jeans blows some crummy licks from a fuckin’ toy at me? No I think I’ll pass on that. Stick to the guitar!”

I was being reasonable and unreasonable. Rude and stupid. Sometimes you find yourself, as a player, a musician, in a world of pain. Painful, yabbering, swaying, wall eyed t shirted , gelled, bunged up drunks. And they get stuck in a loop and try to drag you into it. If you’re a player, you still have your legs and you know the room, you feel the need to take something back from this world. Perhaps your own dignity. For a moment. You get over it and then wake up to a new day. Its not always that way. Can be if you let it.

The next week I did a gig and I had my band with me so I was happier. In firefights, its best to have some light artillery on your side. At this gig I saw and heard Matt Walker and Broderick Smith playing together. Both can make the harmonica do things that the crude archetype I was mocking above could never do. Matt was playing guitar this time and Broderick was singing and playing the harp. What a master! He concentrates on that little thing and gets melodies out of it. Its there to sing as well as him. Supreme players , performers and writers.
Mike Rudd from Spectrum also has a distinctive tone and grasp of the harmonica. He gets it to do stuff for him and doesn't just bring it in for a melancholy wail here and there.
Other harp players I love on records would be Norton Buffalo who played a lot with the Steve Miller band, Lee Oskar from the amazing r&b/funk/soul band WAR and Magic Dick from the J Geils Band. Stevie Wonder hit it and made it dance but he can do that with any instrument. The classic Little Walter and Howling Wolf put sounds and licks together for everybody else to copy for several generations. And, of course, Toots Thielmans. Any of his albums.
So, I’m trying to take back some of that slack I stole when I was abusing some hardnut harp player who must have upset me somewhere along the way. Blow that thing, its easy!

squelch!

This appears in the latest TRIP magazine.For subscribers of RRR Melbourne Community Radio

Squelch. Its a form of music. A nano genre at the moment but I am handing it to the public to make it into something enormous. Take that to the bank! Simple as that. Doing BLB with Elizabeth early on I was moaning about pathetic names for genres of music. Like “beats”. That has got to be the worst. What the fuck is that all about then? I never go near anything if its called “beats”. I mean I probably have heard a lot of it and liked it and I probably listened to some very recently. i wouldn’t call it “beats “ though. “Dance” is also piss weak. And that scene is usually full of great pr whizz with great names for tracks that don’t really deserve it. DJs have great names too, and they mostly don’t deserve much. I respect their biz though, their shamelessness is most admirable. I love it. Their view of the world is total SQUELCH.
One night I sat at a club and asked a lady to identify all the sounds that were flying around the room. She did this for me, she was glad for the opportunity to dump this useless offall that was crowding her mind onto me. SQUELCH! Turned out that each song was its own micro genre. Just as I suspected! They know how to squeeze every ounce out of the stuff in that scene. Nothing is left to chance. Flog it!
Reggae is a great name for a form of music. It took a while and then someone heard someone say it and it caught on. Rockabilly too. Actually, while we’re at it, “spoken word” has to be the lamest shingle anybody has ever put out in front of their act doesn’t it? SPOKEN WORD! That is bad. For people who are trading in WORDS, that is very , very lazy and mo poke in the extreme. There is no jizz in that title, no bounce. Jazz is a great name for a form of music. Blues. Punk. Anything with “core” in it is pretty pathetic. Like a dangleberry or clingon on the arse of something bigger, grimly hanging on. Same with “post” or “alt” . Just substitute “not”. Modern shit with good names are GRIME. CRUNK. Shit, thats about it.
Rock Music is hopeless. Whats the best they came up with recently ? Emo! They ran out of puff trying to say a word and we were left with that three letter furball . Paste a message on Friendface and leave us! SQUELCH!

I could go on. On BLB, Elizabeth usually stops me. Ta.
I have to say that she has the capacity to go on too. I am a live and let live guy though. I just put on my earphones and listen to sports radio until it looks like its all over. The loyal BLB listeners text me constantly to keep me in touch with what shes on about this time. What can I say? I’m a man- I give- I bend like a tree in a gale- then I give again.

One day I came into the studio and said I wanted to hear nothing but squelching sounds. I wanted to get my SQUELCH on. I was after a new kind of SQUELCH. I wanted , you know “ dark side of the squelch” or "never mind the squelch “ or “ a hard days squelch”. “The SQUELCH SESSIONS”! “the squelch remains the same!”
“I know what you mean” Elizabeth said. I reached for this disc by “SPOONBILL” called “AIRBORNE”. It was total squelch. See, I’d already slipped into talking about a noun there. i moved from adjectival discourse into naming the sounds. Thats what happened on the show that day. I got so many texts from BLB listeners wanting more SQUELCH! Straight off. We had a movement. People wanted squelch before hey knew what it was. And then , best of all, it was already here. SQUELCH was in the house! Elizabeth and I moved quickly to define the new genre. I wold say it s a form of music with no known boundaries save for the lack of loud guitars. Effected guitars are ok though , bendy, wah and soft fuzz sounds. Octaves especially. That sound on a lot of 70s soul with the trickling waterfall effect. Thats total SQUELCH. SQUELCH is a smooth and viscous sound. Like machines shitting. Horribly organic. Vegetable automatons gurgling to the nth. Taking things to the logical rotting conclusion. Its rooted in machines having wet dreams. Nocturnal funk. Smooth and bubbling. Electro diarrhoea. Non verbal. Know what I squelch?
We tried to reach into the past and we played a song by a person we archly and crassly called “the Godmother of SQUELCH”. This was Sophie Ellis Bextor , mainly because I had her cd in my bag and I think shes a doll. “Murder on the dancefloor”. We heard SQUELCH everywhere. It was a SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH,SQUELCH world.
Later, I was working in my studio and used a plugin , ( a virtual effect). It was called COSMONAUT and it eq’d the sound to make it vintage and clunky. It also had a setting called , you guessed it- SQUELCH! There is nothing better than making something up that already exists . I’m sure everybody has experienced that heavy, throbbing, thrill. It must be good if its already here! Authentic also. Its just that nobody has identified it yet. Its a fact that you simply cant see things that you don’t recognize. Its not there until you see it! All performers know this conundrum.

So, for the history books, let it be known that SQUELCH - a new microgenre of music was first identified and therefore sighted and named and therefore created and sent out into the world from the studios of RRR fm in Melbourne by Dave Graney and Elizabeth McCarthy from within the sturdy construct that is their show, BANANA LOUNGE BROADCASTING in August 2010.

postscript. The week after we’d invented SQUELCH, when we were all set to deal with POST SQUELCH, Elizabeth had to go away on a course with that guy Anthony Robbins and I had to do the show solo. I was going to have an old friend in on the sow, New York based record producer Victor Van Vugt. I called him and said I was going to be playing some SQUELCH on the show. Without dropping a beat he said, “is that like SQUEE?

Semaphore-" like the sixties with a hardon!"

AN EDITED VERSION OF THIS STORY APPEARS IN THE CURRENT ADELAIDE REVIEW...

Adelaide has presented many faces to us but we had never experienced the likes of the Semaphore Workers Cub. What a pleasant surprise it was too. Semaphore is some sort of a fading rose of a seaside idyll. In its late bloom. I went there only a couple of years ago and was charmed by the wide streets and the sleepy country town tempo of the place. How such a joint had been allowed to be accessible to anyone but the super rich was a conundrum. It is beautifully down beat and genteel. Old world. (Even though the smart people have obviously already gotten involved and put in a lot of confusing traffic diversions in that beautiful wide main street leading to the beach. It wont be long until this late bloom is over and the harvesting of real estate dreams begins) On this trip we were to discover it had an even richer and stranger inner life.
The Workers Club has no signage outside as they “ don’t want any passing trade”. This alarmed us as we musicians have been bashed and narrowed in our thinking to be completely commercial at all times. We drove the short distance from the delightful hotel to the club. Inside it was all high ceilinged wide ambience just like those old dilapidated former embassies people used to live in in St Kilda.
Walls absolutely festooned with banners from Communist groups the world over. Images of Che and Ho and various Euro Reds looked over the proceedings. We were told that the phone had been ringing hot which sent our hearts low as that usually means no one will bother to actually come. We finished the soundcheck and were enjoying game of pool on the full sized billiard tables as the people started coming in. Apparently there had been a queue around the block . They charged in and lined up at the bar. A totally blue collar, brawny, rough hewn , up for it bunch of party people the likes of which I didn’t think existed anymore. I thought they'd all been domesticated. This was not a crowd from the prissy world of indie rock music or Sunday colour supplement stories of the best bars/coffees in whatever sad city you live in. This was a real underworld crowd. There were music clips being shown on one wall, “howlin wolf” and “sonny boy williamson” and “etta James” all bawling the blues. Mesmerising in its lost worlde class.
Stu Thomas did a set with himself on his orange baritone six string bass/guitar hybrid style of playing along with sunglasses,white jacket and Clare Moore on drums and vocals. They played for about an hour. (They had already played a set the night before at the Grace Emily).
Then we got up and did an hour long set ourselves.Two guitars,bass and drums, all keyed up by the crowd and the blues in the room.
The gates were closed and no one else was being let in.
I always say “hello Comrades” at shows as a fellow once said it to me at Trades Hall in Melbourne and I felt so great I took it on. In Brisbane, opening for Glen Campbell last December I said it and half the audience walked out. They hate “commies“ up there. (Commies being interchangeable with “from melbourne” which I had also informed them was the case) . Here, everybody was addressed as “comrades and fellow workers”. I felt I was at home.
At the break I walked off the stage towards the door and a fellow stopped me to say hello. “You don’t remember me do you?” I said I was having trouble and he told me his name. An old friend from the country. I’m not the hugging type but I felt kind of emotive and we embraced. Probably because I knew him at that time in your life before the retrograde sets in - when your were just a kid. He used to dink me home from footy training. Anyway, something was troubling me, something I was supposed to remember. Then it hit me, this fellow had been involved in a double murder- of his parents. I didn’t know him when that happened, I only knew him from an earlier, untroubled period. Can you shut things like that from your mind? Should you? Sometimes its easy to talk to people you haven’t been in contact with for a while. I said “So, you’ve had an ....interesting life...”. He agreed and alluded to his parents. No smiling at all from either of us here. He introduced me to his girlfriend. Later, I felt I had to ask about the time I had referred to as “interesting”. He just looked at me and said, “madness , Dave- madness” and we talked a little more in that crowded room, touching lightly on very heavy areas. It was a difficult conversation to have and a difficult place to try and have it in. I knew I had to go back on and do another set. Sometimes, being a musician, going onto the stage or taking care of your gear is a good way to take your leave from people and situations that get to be a bit too chaotic. I enjoyed running into him though and wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid talking to him again.

We got up and played for another hour. The joint was jumpin’!
As we walked off “the Internationale” was played at a rousing volume. We sat around and talked to people , those attending the show and then the people from the club. What an amazing place! So connected to history and the local community.
You also get the greatest critiques in places like that. A guy apparently left saying, “Dave Graney! Like the sixties with a hard on!”
The fellow who books it talked of being sent by the PARTY to Cuba to attend a conference. Lost worlds.
The next day we got up at midday and played for an hour on the foreshore at Semaphore. A different crowd and a different sound. Blasting sunlight and strong sea winds. Guitars went out of tune and I couldn’t see the led lights of my pedal.
Then we drove to the Wheatsheaf and played for an hour at 4pm. This set was gonna be soft and conversational. It was , for about two songs. My watch stopped somewhere along the way and the second set stretched out for another one and a half hours. This was Grateful Dead style playing. Clare Moore and Stu Thomas eventually played for seven hours over three days.
After the set a white haired woman bailed me up and bawled at me for not lowering the door price while I was on stage. She flounced off still yelling at me for being up myself. I went to talk with some friends. A tripping barfly came up to give me some shit about my moustache, yabbering about a 60s movie with Shirley Maclaine he had seen. “Jimmy Edwards” I said, referring to the moustachioed British comedian who was in the same film. “Fuck off! How can you know who I’m talking about!” he yelled. I begged off. he came back to talk of an Adelaide musician called Benjamin Hugg. I said I had that album, the one with the cover shot outside of Trims from the late 70s. He shook my hand. He said I should listen to the record. I said I would. He said "Fuck off! I don’t give a fuck what you think!”. I said “sure” and bade my farewells to friends. He followed me yelling about how I should do what he said and every time I agreed he told me to “fuck off”. A difficult character to engage with. I escaped to pack up my gear.
We were still staying in Semaphore. the next day we loaded the van and paid the hotelier. He had been a pretty taciturn character- a busy weekend. Things were a bit quiet now so he spoke more freely. Learning we had been to the workers club he talked of his own father who had been a radical communist and union man. Eventually blackballed from a lot of employment. The publican himself had gone to Moscow to attend a student and workers conference in the 70s. He had enlisted into the armed forces but had had his papers stamped “commie” after a day. He said he didn’t talk about his past to many people as they accused him of being “things like a... traitor”. He laughed, saying he was a “Utopian now”. Whatever the hell that is.
Semaphore was beat. Blue collar. Totally downbeat and beatific. They’ll have to ruin it.
We drove to the bustling wide spot in the road known as Bordertown and engaged an innkeeper for a room for the night. A morbidly obese woman sold us some parcels of indeterminate food material soaked in concentrated animal fats. Bear Grylls would have recoiled at this stuff but we did the right thing by somebody or other and ate a few mouthfuls.
In Melbourne we made camp for a couple of days before blowing town in separate directions. Clare to Hobart and myself to Mt Gambier. I had some personal stuff to take care of.
I stayed with a cousin on his farm about 35ks toward a fishing fleet town. I was wearing leather pants, shirt,waistcoat ,tie and jacket as I was also gonna have my photo taken near one of the mills down there and couldn’t be arsed packing anything more delicate. I was kitted out ‘end of the world” style.
I found myself standing out in a paddock with a herd of shitting, spluttering, pissing cows a couple of times. Being no help but looking cool (in my world). Brando out bush. In spite of the crowd I was hangin’ with. The neighbours will be talking about it for a few years. My cousin was driving across the fields, herding the cows from one field to another, Black Sabbaths “paranoid” album blaring on the cd player. You find out what has endured out in this sort of a map reference. I said , through the noise of the music and the car and the cows, that Ozzie was a bit sad now. My cousin said that he was always a bit of a tool and that Tony Iommi was the brains of the outfit. That is wisdom. In the straight world, people follow along with the idea that Ozzie was a wildman- just like a herd of cows. The man can hardly move , let alone talk!
We sat in his old Cockys farm house, that he has renovated- to make it SMALLER - and listened to the Who on his handmade stereo and ate pasta and chocolate. The sea and the weather happening eternally outside and the cows adding their very ephemeral sounds to the nightly fields .I learned some country wisdom. He has a friend , who has rarely saddled up, though he has a female he is smitten with who “narrows him up a bit”, whose view on marriage or co habitation was , when pressed, “ why give half your tucker away to get the other half cooked”. I guess you could take that to the bank to see what they make of it. As a fellow cheapskate , it made a lick of sense to me.

interrogations via the magic box!

well you put out a record and people from the internet send you questions and you asnswer them...

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Everyone joins or forms a band to get laid. If your band represents your sex life are you Casanova or spending plenty of time doing the five knuckle shuffle?

I PLAY MUSIC BECAUSE I LIKE THE MUSIC PART OF IT. IF MUSIC IS ANY GOOD , YES, IT HAS SOME SEX IN IT OR ON IT OR AROUND IT. 

We don’t want to know about the painfully hip bands your press release says you’re influenced by. Take us back to your bedroom when you were 14. What band posters did you have on the wall?

MUDDY WATERS, HOWLING WOLF, ROLLING STONES, HOUND DOG TAYLOR, JOHHNY WINTER, DEEP PURPLE, ALLMAN BROTEHRS, QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE, JJ CALE, LYNYRD SKYNYRD, IAN HUNTER, LOU REED, WAR.

What’s been your worst gig and why are you glad there’s no footage of it on Youtube … yet?

DEPENDS WHO IS BAD FOR. DO YOU MEAN FOR US OR FOR THE AUDIENCE? AS TO THE LATTER, I DID DO A GIG IN PERTH WHEN PRINCESS DI HAD DIED (sic) AND ATTEMPTED  A VERSION OF STREET HASSLE WITH HER BEING MENTIONED IN IT. YOU KNOW THE PART WHERE THERE IS A  DEAD PROSTITUTE ON THE FLOOR AND  THE DOPE DEALER  IS TELLING HER BOYFRIEND TO 'DRAG HER OUT IN THE STREET AN' BY THE MORNING SHES  ANOTHER HIT AND RUN..." THE ROOM WAS SLOWLY CLEARING OUT. I WISH THERE WAS SOME YOUTUBE OF THAT....
I ALWAYS ENJOY PLAYING MUSIC AND  DOING GIGS. 

Tomorrow’s payday, so we’ve only got $20 to get you drunk. Where do we go and what do we buy with it?

I DON'T DRINK. I LIKE TO SIT AND HAVE A  COFFEE IN THE CITY. BUT I ONLY LIKE STARBUCKS . BREWED COFFEE ONLY. NOT TOO STRONG AND IN A  BIG PAPER CUP.

We’ve been looking in the $2 bin at Dixons Recycled and also bidding on eBay – what releases are we looking for there that your band has put out?

I GUESS THAT WOULD BE THE HIGHEST SELLING ONE AND THAT WOULD BE "THE SOFT AND SEXY SOUND". ITS A GREAT DISC. I WOULD BE HAPPY FOR PEOPLE TO ENJOY ANY OF THE DISCS WE'VE MADE. I DID THE BEST I COULD WITH 'EM ALL. THE LATEST, 'SUPERMODIFIED" , IS A  PRETTY GOOD PLACE FOR SOMEONE TO START ACTUALLY. YOU KNOW, IF I WAS INTERROGATED BY THE SECRET POLICE AND THEY WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IT WAS I DID I COULD TELL THEM TO LISTEN TO SUPERMODIFIED AND THAT WOULD BE IT. A LOT OF MY OTHER RECORDS HAVE STRAYED AWAY FROM OUR CENTRAL THEMES BUT THE LAST THREE  HAVE BEEN VERY FOCUSSED.

Suppose we put a gun to your head and force you to kiss a member of another Australian band. Who, which band and why?

I THINK THE RAPPER DIRTCHILD MIGHT BE WORTH THE PUNCH YOU'D PROBABLY GET FOR YOUR TROUBLES. THEN YOU MIGHT HAVE AN INTERESTING CHAT AFTER ALL THE VIOLENCE. INTERNATIONALLY, IT WOULD BE SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR. BECAUSE SHES AN ABSOLUTE DOLL. 


Don’t talk to me about ...clothes. If people talk about what you are wearing it means you've done something wrong.
The secret to success is ...to make up your own prizes and to also keep it a  secret when you have won them.
I’m most proud of ....being a  musician and playing with my band who are great people and company and are incredible players. The best I have ever been with. 
The three people I’d love to invite to dinner are ....Guillaume Apollinaire, Brigitte Bardot and Jim Thompson. A French  poet, a French actor  and an American   pulp writer.
When I was a kid I wanted to be .....a priest, then my sister kicked me under the table and I changed my story to a  pop star. The Brothers in skirts were just about to shove me in to the big black van that took little altar boys away....
I laugh every time I .....watch the Big Bang theory, the IT Crowd or IDEAL.
The thing I’d change about me is .......the amount of money in my bank account. Then I would go and live in Paris. 
I’m ashamed to say I .....don't drink alcohol. I was a  great drinker once. A champion, like all my family.
My favourite word is..... "boom!" I smash my fist on the table as I say it- after dropping a  bombshell...
The talent I wish I had is ......to play the guitar like willie nelson or grant green.
My course in life was set when .....I was born.In country south australia.
The person I admire most is ......Patrick White. Australias greatest ever writer. 
My greatest extravagance is ......wearing denim or leather. I love denim and am looking for a  denim suit. One or two piece. I also never pay more than $300 for any piece of musical equipment. Guitars or amps etc...
My friends think I am ......tight. as a  fishers arse. And they know me very well. 
My favourite place on earth is ......London,with a  lot of money. So I have never really experienced that! 
The most useful advice I ever got was ......"theres no retiring n this business! I relaxed after I knew I was a  hostage. 
As I’ve gotten  older ......I’ve  got to hate playing slow music. Or listening to it. The whole shithouse is goin' up inflames! Melancholy is or young people. 
The thing I hate most is ..... commercial radio not playing any new music and no australian music. 
My most treasured possession is .....a guitar a friend lent me. 
I last cried when .....my cat of 20 years died. Just a  couple of weeks ago. Aughtie. She bit or scratched everybody else who came near. 
My last meal would be .....pretty tasteless i reckon. My mind would be fuzzing out or slowing down. I wouldn't be into it. 

bass- a story I wrote for Australian Musician Magazine

Bass . Think of words like Monolithic.Megalithic.Prehistoric. Primitive.Mystic. Then try to place it in the mix.

When I first started playing music, in the late seventies, everybody seemed to covet Rickenbacker basses. I don’t know why. They had a very hollow type of a sound. Trebly and lots of string in it. Was it the after effects of an influence by Chris Squire from Yes? Bruce Foxton from the Jam played one. Tracey Pew played one in the Boys Next Door.
Otherwise , in the post punk scene the bass guitar was present only occasionally as a deep , driving distorted engine of funk. Jah Wobble in PIL had a great tone and image and their sound, along with the Pop Group ( from Bristol) really brought your attention to that dub influenced spectrum of the sound. The music was open and full of space. Time and space is what the bass players control.
Youth, in Killing Joke had the same sort of goofy, primal aesthetic happening. A big sound with lots of smoke in the players hair. Jean Jacques Burnel in the Stranglers had already brought a lot of focus to the bass with his sound and his lines. He stood right at the front of the stage too, not hiding his lights back with the drums. The Stranglers had that spooky organ with four to the floor drums and spare, fender guitar touches not unlike the MGs. Plenty of room for the bass to step up and play a central role. Peter Hook in Joy Division really anchored that band with his earthy, distorted lines. Crude slabs of sound, pulverising beats.
Hook also had that melodic side which ran through a lot of post punk music and which still pops up as a kind of indie signifying mode. The bass line plays a third note and brings in a melody underneath a scratchy, thin guitar line. The Go Betweens early singes had this down perfectly. Orange Juice with “simply thrilled honey”. Sonic Youth used it a lot.
The bass player in our first band, the Moodists was Chris Walsh. he grew up running around with Tracey Pew out in that hotbed of Melbourne punk, Glen Waverley. Chris played a fretless bass through a Peavey amp with metal pick. His sound was the centre of our band. All the songs swung around the bass and the vocals. the guitars were off to the sides , wigging out.
He is a great player. We got back together fro some reunion shows. No one asked us or was really waiting for us. It was more of a case of some unfinished business. We were soundchecking at the gig. Chris and our guitarist Steve had not done a real lot of playing recently. Their sounds were perfectly preserved from the time our band was playing. Back in the old days. The young front of house guy was from the early 2000s new rock revival scene. He told our guitarist to “dial some mids in”. The guitar was plugged into a Fender twin and every dial was on 10. I told the kid to back off because we weren’t really looking for an Aerosmith type of sound. Steve and Chris were rocking sounds you couldn’t dial up from a pod or a digital amp.
After Chris left the Moodists we played with David McClymont , who had been in the aforementioned Orange Juice. He had had an experience in music from total indie label POSTCARD to pop stardom and recording in the Bahamas and back again. He was very intuitive about music. I mean he didn’t know what each note was called. he had great groove though and we learned a lot from him about arrangements and dynamics.
In the Coral Snakes we had Gordy Blair on the bass. He was a very melodic player. His first instrument was the sax. He was from Belfast , and then London but also from that post punk scene which was like a kind of a school. A lot of shared attitudes.
Adele Pickvance came to us via Robert Forsters band. She later went back to play with the Go Betweens MK111. She had learned to play the bass as a kid, in Queensland clubs with her father. He played the keys and guitar and got more dosh if it was a duo! She stood there for a while and eventually started to play. I mean over a long period. She was never scared of being on stage or in different situations. She came into music by a really natural way, not from a music school or a careers officers suggestion. Such a melodic sense. She could swing and groove too. Outstanding player!
After she left we had the luck to play with Stu Thomas. He started out on the trumpet. He plays a Fender bass , when we are rocking and then when we play a more minimalist setup, he drags out his 6 string Burns baritone which he plays as a bass. It gets that great “plunky” sound you hear on 60s soundtracks. We toured for a year with that sound. It was up against Clare on the vibes and me on acoustic 12 string. A great trio sound. Room for the lyrics to come out.
Bass players listen to the music and songs from a different perspective. I often think of dark, earthy types standing still at the back, while the lead singer and guitarist throw all kinds of mad shapes. John Entwistle from the Who, Bill Wyman grimacing a s well, John Paul Jones escaping all the cameras completely.
There were those others like Chas Chandler from the Animals and Glenn Wheatley from the Masters Apprentices who were actually standing up the back, thinking about the number of payers and how the business could be tightened up.
There have been bands like the 70s prog blues band “Back Door” which was just bass , sax and drums . I once saw a German band with SIX bass players and a poor girl on drums. God it was horrible! I hope she wasn’t a hostage.
Then there are the jazz and funk masters like Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham. Forces of nature. That bit in Sly Stones “Dance to the Music “ where the fuzz bass comes in! OOOOH thats good! Charles Mingus, Barry Adamson, that green devil with the big thumb in the Mighty Boosh....
Recent developments have seen bands like the Dirty three, the White Stripes and the Black keys do without a bass. I mean , the Cramps did it, although Bryan Gregory had an amazing bottom end of low fuzz on his guitar. And in the Doors, its still a baffling mystery how Ray Manzarek did what he did to make the bass seem to happen as well as the right hand handfulls on the organ. (I think they had an actual bass player sometime in the studio).
All these bass less acts know what they’re missing eventually. A joke is a joke , really! You got to have that low end drive in the end.
I did see a great film on the county singer Buck Owens though. He was famous for getting this sound , the “Bakersfield sound”. An area then on the outskirts of LA. He explained that he asked the engineer “how much does that goddam bass take up in the sound?” “About 80%” said the engineer. “Well get rid of it then!” said Buck and thats how he got his sound. He wanted more room for the guitars and the voice. He must have stuck with it for a while though I bet he moved some back in after a while, after he got the hang of that Bakersfield sound.
All the bass players I’ve played with have had amazing skills and chops. I learned so much from all of them.
Stu Thomas, who I play with now, has his own band, THE STU THOMAS PARADOX. Its the band where he drops all the science hes picked up into. they have a great album out called “ESCAPE FROM ALGEBRA”
I love to play the bass too. On records and when I get to play with friends like Harry Howard. Last show I did with him , I borrowed the bass amp of the other act, Ron Penos RSVP. It was a sansamp into a Galleon Kruger head into a 4 by 10 bass cab. Then the other bass player , from Black Cab, brought his cabinet of the same size up and I had a massive tower to plug into. I've always complained about bass players amps, usually when helping them lift the things. Now I understand. You NEED that power under you to really get the oomph required for the true bottom end!
Had such a great time. Like driving a steam train. All that power at your touch. Dampening it and pumping it. Riding it! Not having to smile. Brooding up the back. Thinking about the dosh. It was , no I was monolithic. Megalithic. Primitive. Godlike. I had the total package.

SUPERMODIFIED- EMERGING- ETC- REVIEWS PLUS

SORRY IF THESE BLOGS SEEM TO BE QUITE COMMERCIAL IN NATURE BUT THEY ARE ALL AROUND MY LIFE AND MY LIFE IS A MUSICAL LIFE. I am not really interested in much else, except for books , poetry and dumb tv so its not really commercial. Other people blog about the colour and consistency of their snot. I beg off on inviting people to share that kind of intimacy. Ditto the qualities of my farts. I keep that jive ass stuff outta my music too. My music is actually often about music! I like to descend/ ascend in spirals. While I wait for you know who...
I have actually written a book which is about my music life and its gonna be called "1001 Australian nights" and it'll be out in March 2011.On Affirm press.

I have this remix/remastered/re-sung/re-played/re-strung collection out at the moment. Been doing a lot of shows and will be doing a lot more. I like to play live. Sue me! I like rock clubs and people who go out and be social. Melbourne is a great place for that kinda stuff.

Otherwise, been reading some books. Discovered a character called AE Coppard who wrote in the UK in the 20s. Astoundingly tight and condensed sentences. Other people would take whole chapters - or books- to drop what he does in a single line.

Continuing to do a weekly radio show on RRR with Elizabeth McCarthy which has been great. We interviewed Jacki Weaver who is in town for a David Williamson play. I blushed when she said she and her boyfriend "kissed" to the SOFT 'n' SEXY SOUND.

A lot of other artists and writers and comedians have come in. And I hear a lot of great music. I play all the Australian stuff I like - which is a lot of it- and a lot of jazz and hip hop. I recommend the newish cd by Chuck Prophet called "let freedom ring". Otherwise I toss any cds by hipster yanks in the bin. Everybody else scrambles for that shit. They're all old enough to know better but they act like they're still being bullied. Except for Josh Homme and Bonnie Prince Billy. The rest? Toss their skinny white asses in the river!

The winter has been dark and long and cold and its been difficult to move around outdoors. In the middle of it, our little cat who has been with us for 20 years went downhill due to kidney failure and died. I found her on the floor one cold morning. Stiff as a board. She bit and scratched and hissed at anybody who came into our house for years . A real presence. I called her "aughtie" which was what Tom Custer used to called George when they were kids. She was a Port Melbourne street cat. Padded around us for every cd we've made since 1990. Whenever we moved gear in and out of the house we had to first open the door a little to see if she was waiting there to make her escape. (She never went outside except onto the deck). She was always there on the other side of the door, doing what came naturally and attempting to head for freedom. She had a bell on her to warn native birds for a while. Its all over the cd "heroic blues" , ringing softly as as she walked around the studio. Always scurrying around your feet as you struggled with a big amp or piano. She had all that imponderable, wilful, unknowable, unpredictable stuff that cats have intrigued and amused and bedevilled people with over the years. Funny that an animal can let you know so much, about yourself and the world.

That was very upsetting and I let you in on it. Now I will back off and request you assume the formal position of all strangers on the island. As you were!


Even his staunchest fans would admit that Dave Graney is something of a queer bird. With his penchant for archaic fashions and mannerisms, he seems quixotically at odds with the modern world. Despite this, his artistic persona also neatly encapsulates some of the key strategies of postmodernism, such as a playful artifice and ironic distance from his own creativity. Graney holds the real world at arm’s length, yet he is fascinated with current and historical pop culture.

His recorded work reflects this magpie approach in a way that can render it confusing to casual listeners, who find it hard to distinguish between the actor and the real person beneath the dandyish swagger. The way Graney has positioned himself as an anachronistic enigma has come at the expense of commercial success – even within the sphere of so-called “alternative” music. This is a shame, as Graney has produced a formidable body of work over the last three decades, his career punctuated by many highpoints from all his different incarnations.

From the thundering onslaught of The Moodists’ album Thirsty’s Calling (1984), to the widescreen epic of Night Of The Wolverine (1993), to last year’s critically feted Knock Yourself Out, it’s clear that Graney’s power as a writer has remained consistent over the years. This is by no means an easy feat. One only needs to look at Graney’s celebrated peer Nick Cave, whose increasingly hapless and desperate fumblings for relevance have sent his credibility plummeting in recent years. In contrast, the last decade has seen Graney’s muse in overdrive, releasing a steady stream of strong material. The formation of his own record label, Cockaigne, surely precipitated this artistic renaissance, allowing Graney the freedom to do as he pleases, regardless of commercial considerations.

Holed up in his suburban recording studio with his longtime partner and musical foil Clare Moore and a host of regular musical collaborators, Graney created the dark and moody masterpieces Heroic Blues (2001) and The Brother Who Lived (2003) in the early years of this decade. Both albums were perfectly crafted collections, so it comes as a bit of a surprise at first that he’d want to revisit them on Supermodified. The album contains four songs from Heroic Blues and a whopping 10 from Brother. In addition there are four previously unreleased tracks from the same era.

It’s a risk for any artist to re-interpret their own back catalogue, since most fans are inclined to view the original versions as definitive. On the other hand, by shifting the focus away from the content of the songs, Graney and Moore have been able to explore the subtleties of their arrangements more effectively. For years, the pair have been fascinated with creating something they dubbed the “smooth and sexy” sound – basically a mélange of different easy listing styles, such as smooth cocktail lounge funk, ’70s West Coast rock and adult contemporary pop sheen. What previously seemed like a playful subversion of degraded musical styles – those generally shunned by rock purists – has been warped into a muscular and super-charged 18 tracks that work seamlessly as a whole.

Remixing and re-recording vocals and instrumental backings means that songs like ‘All Our Friends Were Stars’ and ‘Midnight To Dawn’ bear very little resemblance to their original restrained settings. Structurally, many numbers are extended with instrumental passages or repeated refrains. In each case, it’s not merely the kind of remix a clever engineer might do, but a complete re-arrangement of a song’s constituent parts to imbue it with a whole new mood.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that Supermodified will be regarded as more than a footnote to the albums it draws upon, but as a stop-gap before Graney’s next batch of musical missives it’s more satisfying by far than that old stand-by: the live album.

by René Schaefer- MESS AND NOISE

David Graney has released an abundance of records in his time on planet Earth, and with the release of Supermodified, it's time to add another feather to his bound-to-be flamboyant hat. Supermodified is Graney pimped out, re-worked and custom-build, its sort of like that Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Palace Music record. Old songs newly recorded and freshly worked. Some people tell me, “hey, some of the Graney records have strange production values, but when I see and hear him live the songs are a billion times better”. Well, if that’s the case for you, then this album will be right up your alley.

It’s an accurate portrait of the live sound, and its shit hot funky. Taking ten tracks from the 2004 album The Brother Who Lived , four from Heroic Blues , and four unreleased ones means this record isn’t just for Graney enthusiasts or diehard fans, but its also a good starting place for beginners. Everything is sounding crisp and top-notch, which is something you’d hope to expect for a band that plays nearly everyday of the week. “The Brother Who Lived” and “All Our Friends Were Stars” should be hit singles, “The Royal Troll” has thick distorted riffing and pounding drums with the typically laid-back Graney croon. “Midnight to Dawn” is another rocking number with wife Claire Moore crashing about in the rhythm section. The whole album sounds like glam rock from a boom box at a gay parade in Melbourne. But sung by the straightest man on earth who is for some reason leading the rally. Think Roxy Music but with the Australian equivalent of Jonathan Richman on vocals. “Clinging To The Coast”, has some interesting compression on the drums, but it works. “Anchors aweigh” are the sounds you’d be hearing if you walked past a sleazy neon-lit cocktail night bar, in fact the lounge-esque themes are pretty common throughout the whole record. I never heard the original to begin with, but this one is well recommended.

Review Score: 7.5/10
nathan roche- au review


Talking of Dave, and being cool, then it’s great to report that Mr Graney is back – along with Clare Moore of course – and the Lurid Yellow Mist band, with his latest album “Supermodified” – and the clue is in the title as this is a re-working of a whole load of songs from the “Brother Who Lived” album and a smaller selection from “Heroic Blues” release. This is altogether a more relaxed, and relaxing effort, than its predecessor the excellent “Knock Yourself Out” album, with the volume turned down and the atmosphere turned up a notch or two. Graney is the ultimate 21st century crooner – reflecting back to the sultry funk of the Coral Snakes at their very best – but also using a selection of “modern” recording techniques and band styles that make it all very relevant today. And the trick, I think, is that Mr Graney can lure the listener in with his laid back style and then drop either a beautiful melody, or a stunning arrangement to create a sensuous listening experience. “Like a Millionaire” is a case in point with its extended coda which builds up the tension but retains a relaxed an open feel. That’s not to say its all “cocktail bar latino cool funk”. “The Royal Troll” for example has a definite driven feel, and the re-working of “Clinging to the Coast” is superb more or less completely revisiting the song from its original stripped down version on “Heroic Blues” – it turns out in hindsight that Dave had a pretty bad lung infection at the time of that album which would explain the contrasting styles and delivery. ”Midnight to Dawn” has a great rock feel with Clare channeling John Bonham under riffing guitars. If I was going to pick out a memorable track then “Are we going to fast for love” is just simply beautiful, however it would be remiss of me to single out one song on what is, simply put, a wonderful album.

rob salford - aural delights blog -salford city radio


LIVE DATES

Saturday 11th September at the Tote w/ Telecom + Brainrust + Money for rope.

Friday 17th September - Esplanade hotel, St Kilda- Victoria

Saturday 18th September - Westernport Hotel - San Remo Victoria.

Saturday 25th Sept- (GRAND FINAL NIGHT) - The Old Bar- Smith st Fitzroy.

Saturday 2nd October- Semaphore Workers Club

Sunday 3rd October (afternoon) Semaphore Music Festival- Adelaide

Sunday 3rd October (evening) Wheatsheaf Hotel - Thebarton- Adelaide

Friday November 5th - Coogee Diggers.NSW (w/Conway Savage)
Saturday November 6th - MORPETH BITTER AND TWISTED BEER FESTIVAL.
Sunday November 7th - Sandringham Hotel Newtown - w/Conway Savage.